Introduction to Mark

The Book of Mark is the shortest of the four Gospels in the New Testament of the Bible.  It provides only snippets of happenings, events and characters covered more fully by Matthew, Luke and John.  Because of this, there arose the theory that Mark was the first Gospel written and the other writers used his as an outline.

Well, Luke did know Mark, so we can assume part of his material came from Mark.  Mark himself received much of his information from Peter.  But, there is no reason to assume that John or Matthew sat down and used Mark as their outline for events.

This short size also is used as the argument that that Mark is the oldest Gospel, since obviously the older the document, the shorter the text, according to these arguments.  Again no reason for such an argument to be true and adds no value to our knowledge of this book.

Next up is that the Book was written to gentile Roman believers, as Hebrew customs are explained, maybe around 60 AD?

Mark 1:1

This verse is an announcement to the Gospel.
What is a Gospel?  It is Good News.  A term used by many of the Roman Rulers to announce their story when it was sent out the Empire.

Because we come two millennia after the events told of in this book, we can look back and understand that we have the inside scoop on what Mark is about to tell us.

From the beginning, Mark lays the foundation of this writing of Good News.

And it is important to remember that the Good News is Jesus of Nazareth.